GULF COAST CONSORTIUM FOR COMMUNITY-BASED EDUCATION

Galveston, Texas

Team Contact/Coordinator: Marconi Monteiro, Ed.D.

Email: monteiro@bcm.tmc.edu

Phone: 713/798-7768

Fax: 713/798-1442

Faculty Development Needs to Address at the Models That Work Conference

Over 300 community physicians teach students from the three schools. We plan to use a diversified faculty development program (including workshops, correspondence, site visits, distance learning methods) to meet the needs of our preceptors.

Rationale and Need for the Program

The Gulf Coast Consortium for Community-Based Education was formed in 1997 in the Houston/Galveston area of Southeast Texas. Partners in the consortium are the University Medical Branch at Galveston, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, and the East Texas Area Health Education Center. This collaboration among institutions which have historically been competitors for resources is motivated by strong common needs to share community preceptors in a rational fashion, and to cooperate in seeking funding for community-based education. Cooperation among programs in a region can greatly reduce the stress on community faculty that is created by competition for preceptors and the need for preceptors to juggle multiple sets of forms, schedules, and learning objectives for students enrolled at different schools. Furthermore, collaboration among medical schools in preceptor recruitment, community faculty development, and infrastructure support can improve educational quality, save money, and enhance external funding initiatives.

In its first year, the Consortium has led strategic planning retreats, sponsored consultation visits, launched four task forces, and secured state funding for a major telecommunications infrastructure development project. This application stems from the work of the Faculty Development Working Group of the Consortium, which sees opportunity to become a pilot site for the Models That Work program as a strategic step in addressing the Consortium's faculty development needs.

The Faculty Development Working Group has begun by focusing its attention on the needs of the three schools' pre-clinical preceptors. Over 300 community physicians serve as preceptors for the first and second year primary care clinical courses that each school offers. Theses courses emphasize the acquisition of basic clinical skills and are designed to provide an early introduction to primary care principles and values through the exposure of first-and-second year medical students to community-based primary care physicians. Needs assessment studies conducted by the schools have indicated strong interest in teaching on the part of those physicians; simultaneously, they recognize that they need special training to teach students in the early years of medical school. Furthermore, each school has offered at least some faculty development activities in the form of targeted conferences and dinner sessions on clinical teaching and evaluation skills. These activities have attracted a good number of preceptors, but not all of our target group.

Recognizing that we still have not involved many of our preceptors in faculty development activities, the Consortium's Faculty Development Working Group is seeking alternative, creative strategies for delivering faculty development to our community physicians. A common barrier to traditional faculty development to our community physicians. A common barrier to traditional faculty development efforts (workshops, conferences, dinner sessions, etc.) is the difficulty community preceptors generally have in attending to these activities because of busy clinical schedules to geographical barriers. The recent approval of a large state grant to fund the development of a telecommunications infrastructure for the Consortium's community-based programs has opened the door for us to begin faculty development through novel distance learning methods. The commitment of key faculty from each school and education professionals from East Texas AHEC provides a group of faculty development specialists who can carry out the activities of this pilot program.

Needs Assessment Plan

In order to assess the faculty development needs of the Consortium preceptors we propose:

• Consolidate and summarize results from separate schools' needs assessment studies;
• Develop a needs assessment survey that addresses objectives common to the three schools in the Consortium, particularly in the area of faculty development through distance learning modes;
• Consolidate available resources in terms of faculty, materials, and training strategies among the Consortium schools; and
• Create a database, with the assistance of east Texas AHEC, that accurately reflects faculty development interests, needs, and resources among community preceptors.

Faculty Development Strategies for Gulf Coast Consortium

The Faculty Development Working Group of the Consortium has developed a preliminary plan for addressing the faculty development needs of the three schools' community preceptors. Our plan is to:

• Continue school specific activities that target issues pertinent to each school's curricular offerings which community physicians serve as preceptors. These activities will refer to course orientation and specifics of course evaluation and logistics;
• Utilize existing CME conferences that target community physicians to offer faculty development sessions to interested physicians. Currently, the family medicine departments at both UTMB-Galveston and Baylor College of Medicine, offer Review Courses to family physicians that could be used for such sessions;
• Develop and implement special faculty development conferences, sponsored by the Consortium, that address the special needs of the community preceptors;
• Develop and implement CME Faculty Development conferences that would incorporate faculty development concepts and skills into primary care-orientated instructional activities for community physicians; and
• Develop faculty development efforts through the use of distance learning technology, using synchronous and synchronous Internet methods and teleconferencing that could capitalize on the technology infrastructure grant recently awarded.

The Consortium institutions propose to collaborate in terms of human, material, and financial resources for the development and delivery of these activities. In addition, the Faculty Development Working Group will develop evaluation strategies to assess the effect of these efforts on our community faculty and on student learning. The evaluation strategies would involve evaluation methods specific to each school and novel evaluative studies conducted with the community physicians.

We believe that being a pilot site for the HRSA Models That Work program will offer a unique opportunity to promote inter-school collaboration and to evaluate the effect of joint faculty development efforts on clinical primary care education. The Gulf Coast Consortium for Community-Based Education has already demonstrated its potential to develop collaborative efforts in terms of planning and securing support for joint activities.